On the 90th anniversary of Social Security, PPI’s Ben Ritz talks on News Nation about PPI’s recent proposal to award Social Security benefits based on how many years someone works rather than how much they earned throughout their career.
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Manno for Forbes: Parents Reshape K-12 Public Education As Students Go Back To School
It’s back-to-school season, with an estimated 47.2 million K-12 public school students and 3.2 million teachers returning to their classrooms. They come back to a K-12 system offering an expanding menu of public education choices for families (and teachers) that are leading parents to reshape public education. A Tyton Partners report dubs them “activated parents.” While COVID-19 accelerated this parent uprising, other longer-term forces set the stage for it.
Upheaval In The Making
Three factors have fueled a slow but relentless wave of K-12-activated parent upheaval, one that began before COVID-19 but gained unstoppable momentum during and after the pandemic.
- Expansion of public school choice. Over more than 60 years, K-12 policy changes have created a variety of public school choices for families. They now include options such as magnet schools, charter schools, microschools, learning pods, open enrollment, dual enrollment, course choice, tutoring, homeschooling, and career pathways programs. Moreover, families can mix-and-match these options. For example, more than a third of homeschool families also use traditional district public schools, and another 9% have a child in a charter public school.
- Rising dissatisfaction with public education. A Gallup poll shows that satisfaction with public education has declined. Between 2017 and 2025 , the share of adults satisfied with the quality of public education fell from 37% to 24%, reflecting a broader erosion of confidence in U.S. institutions. The 2025 Phi Delta Kappan poll reports that Americans’ confidence in K-12 public schools is at an all-time low. Only 13% grade them an A or a B, down from 19% in 2019 and 26% in 2004. Adults have more positive attitudes toward their local schools, with over 40% grading them highly.
- Public funding for private school access. Policy changes over more than 35 years in 33 states have created 81 different K-12 programs that give families public funding to cover the costs associated with private schools. These programs include vouchers, tax credits, and education savings accounts.
Continue reading in Forbes.
Ritz for Forbes: On Social Security’s 90th Birthday, A New Idea To Solve Its Shortfall
Since it was signed into law 90 years ago today, Social Security has become the most successful antipoverty program in American history and the foundation upon which most Americans plan their retirement. But changing demographics and policy mistakes have weakened that foundation and put the program on track for a crisis before the end of the next president’s term. Policymakers must act quickly to strengthen the program without imposing an unfair burden on vulnerable seniors or working Americans.
At its conception, Social Security was designed to be an “earned benefit” — workers pay a dedicated payroll tax on wages up to a certain level, and once these workers reach retirement age, they receive benefits to replace some fraction of the wages upon which they were taxed. But in practice, funds paid in by today’s workers are used to pay the benefits due to today’s retirees. And every year since 2010, the program has spent more on benefits than it raised in dedicated revenue because the ratio of workers to retirees is worsening as our population ages.
Unfortunately, today’s policymakers have only compounded the problem. Last year, bipartisan majorities in Congress voted overwhelmingly to give higher-income retirees already receiving public pensions the opportunity to draw more generous benefits. And earlier this year, Republicans siphoned off a portion of the program’s revenue stream in their “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Keep reading in Forbes.
‘Export control’ decisions ought to be made on ‘national security’ grounds, and the government shouldn’t earn money from approving sales
FACT: ‘Export control’ decisions ought to be made on ‘national security’ grounds, and the government shouldn’t earn money from approving sales.
THE NUMBERS: Export licenses granted for military-related technologies –
| FY 2023* | 37,943 |
| FY 2022 | 40.245 |
| FY 2021 | 40.567 |
WHAT THEY MEAN:
A strange and troubling-in-multiple-ways announcement via BBC*:
“Chip giants Nvidia and AMD have agreed to pay the US government 15% of Chinese revenues as part of an ‘unprecedented’ deal to secure export licences to China, the BBC has been told. The US had previously banned the sale of powerful chips used in areas like artificial intelligence (AI) to China under export controls usually related to national security.”
* Using a journalistic source, as the administration hasn’t made an official statement as of our publication time.
This policy lurch is the most recent in a three-year back-and-forth, which began with an October 2022 ban on sales to Chinese customers of exports of high-end semiconductors meant for artificial intelligence programming. Nvidia, the California-based graphics processing unit and AI chip designer, followed up by designing a version of its “H100” and “H200” chips (designated “H20”) meant to be useful only for commercial markets. Then-Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo approved the idea in December 2023. The Trump administration, having re-blocked the H20 chip in mid-April, has now apparently changed its mind, allowing Nvidia (and AMD as well) to proceed if they give the U.S. government 15% of the money they earn from these sales.
Outside the trade-and-security world, this sort of direct and apparently long-term government involvement in particular companies usually means trouble. (See below for some thoughts on the implications for taxation and market economics.) Taken strictly as export control policy, it’s worse. Decisions like “should advanced tech companies sell a particular type of computer chip to China?” are complex judgment calls, but their foundation ought to be simple: the best national security analysis available. Adulterating that with revenue concerns is a bad mistake. In specific cases it poses both the risks of ill-advised high-tech sales to potential adversaries, and the risk of lost exports of safe products. More generally, it opens an essential policy area to systemic danger of corruption.
To pull back: “Export control” policy attempts to ensure that military-related technologies — not only actual weapons but software, specialized ceramics and alloys, advanced chips and computers, biotechnology, etc. — developed in America and allied countries don’t go to adversaries, or spill out onto world markets from which they can then flow to unfriendly places. Using a base in American law and four international “regimes” meant to coordinate policies to the extent possible with allies and major powers (also see below), government experts centered in the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) try to categorize, track and when necessary ban exports of 538 classes of physical goods and software in 9 industry groups. (Nuclear technology and firearms; special materials, chemicals, toxins, and microorganisms; materials processing; electronics; computers; telecommunications and ‘information security’; sensors and lasers; navigation and avionics; marine; aerospace and propulsion.) BIS’s 600 staffers are busy; their most recent Annual Report records decisions on 37,943 license applications — about 100 a day — covering $26.7 billion in total exports, or about 1.5% of all U.S. goods sales abroad. To make these calls they need to:
- Understand the state of technology in fields as different as microbiology, artificial intelligence, materials science, avionics, and ballistics, whether in the United States or elsewhere.
- Make reasonable estimates of the effect export limits would have on potential adversaries. (Slow them down? Push them into developing their own technologies independent of U.S. input? Both at the same time?)
- Make reasonable estimates of the impact lost export revenue would have on American research, development, and future technological leadership.
- Then, integrate these to reach the best available judgment on the national security merits of a specific application to export one of the listed products.
The officials charged with making these calls rarely have all the information they’d like, their decisions are typically unpalatable choices between lesser evils or unhappy ones among competing goods, and export control history is full of cautionary tales about well-intentioned decisions gone wrong. (Classic ur-case here). As an organizing principle, the Biden administration’s “small yard, high fence” slogan — protect what’s really sensitive, don’t overregulate – is useful, but rarely leads to an obvious answer for any specific decision, and that’s true of the Nvidia/AMD case.
Without passing judgment on the technical questions in this one — did the 2022 freeze slow Chinese tech development, or, contrariwise, accelerate Huawei’s own chip-design program? if the H20 ban were to stay on, would other European or Asian suppliers simply replace U.S. firms? how would lost export revenue affect U.S. firms’ research budgets and next-generation products? — it’s enough to say that U.S. officials need to base their decision on impartial analysis and objective national security criteria.
Adding a government revenue interest to this mix risks warping not only this particular decision, but future export control policy in general. When favored transactions will bring in money, after all, government will have an incentive to allow transactions that might not be harmless. Contrariwise, if it can collect money from one company, it will have an incentive to ask others for similar fees. That can mean a large incentive for corruption of government and business alike, with both sides aware that flows of money could ease approval of transactions that pose risk, and that government could withhold approval for useful and low-risk transactions when companies choose not to pay.
In sum: Taking money in exchange for approving export licenses is poor semiconductor policy, risky for national security, and bad precedent for future export control policy. Congress should reverse this ill-advised and dangerous call as soon as it returns to work in September.
FURTHER READING
PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:
- Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
- Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
- Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
- Offer a positive alternative.
A BBC look at the 15% Nvidia/AMD arrangement. (Using a journalistic source since, as of this writing, we’ve seen no formal statements from the administration or the companies.)
U.S. background:
Former Undersecretary of Commerce Alan Estevez on export control policy as of 2024.
BIS explains the Export Administration Regulations.
… publishes the list of controlled technologies.
… and documents its work (though only up to FY2023) in Annual Reports.
International background:
The Nuclear Suppliers Group: 1974, covers nuclear-power technology, uranium, heavy water, and transport.
The Australia Group: 1985, on chemical and biological weapons and related technologies.
The Missile Technology Control Regime: 1987, for ballistic missiles and associated technologies such as avionics, sophisticated ceramics and metals, rocketry, etc.
The Waassenar Arrangement: 1994, covering conventional weapons and technologies of the “powerful chip” sort.
And two other things:
Through an export control policy, the “15%” decision has big implications for broader and more abstract questions of governance. Here are two:
Taxation and separation of powers: The Constitution flatly bans taxes on exports. (Article I, Section 9: “No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.”). It’s not clear whether payouts from AMD and Nvidia under this arrangement would be considered a tax, a donation, or something else. But constitutionally, it’s a strange arrangement, and fits into an unwholesome pattern of attempts to create extra-legal “revenue streams”. See also the administration’s attempts to impose tariffs by decree and its (probably unsubstantiated) claims about the investment sections of the still-unpublished tariff “deals” with the European Union, Japan, and Korea.
State capitalism: Likewise, this arrangement is a second ill-judged move away from normal markets in which companies subject to impartial regulation compete with one another on the basis of quality and price, and towards “state capitalism,” . The first example, earlier this year, is the administration’s insistence on getting a “golden share” in U.S. Steel, with rights to participate in future investment and personnel decisions, as a condition of approving Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel last June. This makes the U.S. government a direct competitor to American steel companies as well as international metal suppliers. In much the same way, the Nvidia/AMD payout would make the government a direct beneficiary of exports to China from two American companies and implicitly a rival to others. To put it mildly, that’s not healthy for competing businesses and startups, and it probably, over time, isn’t good for favored “national champions” either.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week.
Jacoby on Background Briefing with Ian Masters: How Ukrainians Feel About the Upcoming Summit to Which They Are Not Invited
We begin and go to Kyiv, Ukraine for an analysis of how Ukrainians feel about the upcoming summit between Putin and Trump to which they are not invited and must hope that Trump does not sell them out as many expect he will. Joining the show is Tamar Jacoby, the Kyiv-based director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s New Ukraine Project. She was a senior writer and justice editor at Newsweek and, before that, the deputy editor of the New York Times op-ed page. Now a regular contributor to Forbes.com, she is the author of Displaced: The Ukrainian Refugee Experience and discusses her article at The Washington Monthly, “Ukrainian Fighters Aren’t Expecting Much from the Trump-Putin Summit.”
Ware for The Hill: Republicans are Making Boogeymen of Their Own Voters on Medicaid
Republicans love their boogeymen; the grotesquely exaggerated villains they use to justify their worst policy ideas. President Trump loves to parade his favorite boogeymen: the “criminal aliens,” the dishonest media, the Democrats, and so on. These dehumanizing caricatures help him rile up his base and lead them to back his cruelest initiatives.
As the GOP-controlled Congress argues the merits of the cuts included in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” act — which is deeply unpopular with voters — they’re discovering new boogeymen to deflect criticism.
Republicans are very defensive about their $1 trillion cut in Medicaid, which will deprive almost 12 million, mostly low-income and working-class Americans, of their health care coverage.
Keep reading in The Hill.
Kahlenberg on Vox’s Today Explained: What Trump Really Wants From Colleges
Richard Kahlenberg joins Vox’s “Today, Explained” with Noel King.
Kahlenberg on NPR’s On Point: How Should American Colleges Measure Merit?
The Trump Administration ordered universities to turn over data to prove they’re not considering race in admissions. But education expert Richard Kahlenberg argues that for college admissions to look at merit fairly, they need to look at class.
Gresser in The Washington Post: The ‘chicken tax’ offers a scary lesson about Trump’s tariffs
In short: Tariffs are not only costly and distortionary. They also tend to be quite sticky.
Economists offer a variety of overlapping explanations for why tariffs, once imposed, have a propensity to outlive the political circumstances that brought them about. Often, that happens because domestic constituencies that benefit from tariffs will fight to keep them around.
President Joe Biden, for example, left most of Trump’s first-term tariffs on Chinese goods in place, despite having said on the campaign trail in 2019 that even a freshman economics student would know they were harming the economy. Removing the tariffs risked angering unions and blue-collar workers that Biden and Democrats hoped to win back from Trump’s coalition.
That has also been true for recent tariffs on steel, aluminum, solar panels and other manufactured goods, explained Ed Gresser, a former assistant U.S. trade representative who is now a vice president at the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank. “The classic explanation is that relatively small but passionate groups believe they benefit from the tariffs, while larger groups pay an incremental cost (often leading to net national loss) but don’t make removing the tariffs a top priority,” he told me via email.
In theory, the sweeping tariffs Trump has imposed this year should be easier to dislodge. They’re so broad that they create fewer industry-specific beneficiaries to lobby for their continuation, and they could be canceled with an executive order rather than requiring an act of Congress. The fact that the public “is very aware of the new tariffs and so far has taken a pretty strong negative view of them” could give a future Democratic president or congressional majority the necessary push to scrap them, Gresser added.
Read the full article in The Washington Post.
Ahead of its 90th Birthday, PPI Offers Innovative Blueprint to Secure Social Security’s Future
WASHINGTON — Ninety years ago this Thursday, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, creating a promise that American workers could count on a measure of dignity and financial security in old age. But changing demographics, decades of political neglect, and recent policy missteps have put that promise in jeopardy, with 24% benefit cuts automatically taking effect before the end of the next president’s term if Congress fails to act.
To mark this anniversary and confront the crisis head-on, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today released “Reform That Rewards Work: A New Vision for Strengthening Social Security’s Intergenerational Compact,” a sweeping proposal to rescue the nation’s most important retirement program while making it fairer, more sustainable, and more pro-work.
Authored by Ben Ritz, PPI’s Vice President of Policy Development, and Nate Morris, Fiscal Policy Fellow at PPI’s Center for Funding America’s Future, the plan would restructure Social Security’s benefit formula, modernize eligibility rules, and raise revenue with a more progressive, growth-friendly revenue system. The proposal’s key features include:
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New “Work Credit” Benefit Formula: Calculate benefits based on years worked, not lifetime earnings, ensuring a low-income worker and their higher-earning boss receive the same benefit for the same number of working years.
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Targeted Retirement Age Adjustments: Gradually increase the early and maximum benefit ages to reflect longer lifespans, with safeguards for lower-income and long-career workers.
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Better Cost-of-Living Adjustments: Change COLAs so they no longer overstate inflation, paired with a “longevity bump” for the oldest retirees most at risk of outliving savings.
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Fairer Spousal and Survivor Benefits: Strengthen protections for widows and widowers while capping excessive subsidies to high-income couples.
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Generationally Fair Financing: Use a mix of progressive income tax reforms and consumption taxes to spread costs more evenly across generations, rather than using regressive payroll tax increases to make working Americans foot the whole bill for fixing a problem created by previous generations.
“Many Social Security proposals cling to the current system but break the historically important link between contributions and benefits,” said Ritz. “Our plan is unique in that it actually strengthens Social Security’s premise as a benefit people earn through work, all while improving fiscal sustainability and reducing poverty.”
According to independent modeling, the plan would close Social Security’s shortfall through a roughly even mix of benefit reforms and tax changes. Top earners would see modest benefit reductions roughly on par with those already projected to occur under current law, but many low-income and long-career workers would receive higher benefits, leading to substantial poverty reductions for older Americans.
“Any serious plan to save Social Security will involve tough tradeoffs,” said Morris. “What makes ours different is that it balances the books without balancing them on the backs of working Americans. This is the kind of radically pragmatic reform Washington needs.”
Read and download the report here.
Launched in 2018, the Progressive Policy Institute’s Center for Funding America’s Future works to promote a fiscally responsible public investment agenda that fosters robust and inclusive economic growth. To that end, the Center develops fiscally responsible policy proposals to strengthen public investments in the foundation of our economy, modernize health and retirement programs to reflect an aging society, transform our tax code to reward work over wealth, and put the national debt on a downward trajectory.
Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us @PPI.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org
Reform That Rewards Work: A New Vision for Strengthening Social Security’s Intergenerational Compact
For 90 years, Social Security has served as the foundation upon which people plan for retirement in the United States. But changing demographics and decades of policy mistakes have put this vital program on unstable financial footing. Just seven years from now — before the end of the next president’s term — the program will face a crisis if no action is taken. Policymakers are running out of time to prevent disaster and give Americans the retirement security they deserve.
At its conception, Social Security was designed to be an “earned benefit” — workers pay a dedicated payroll tax on wages up to a certain level, and once these workers reach retirement age, they receive benefits to replace some fraction of the wages upon which they were taxed. The benefit formula is progressive in the sense that workers with lower incomes receive a higher replacement rate for the wages on which they paid payroll taxes, but people with higher lifetime earnings ultimately receive higher benefits. To reinforce the link between contributions and benefits, an internal “trust fund” was established to ensure that spending on benefits would track payroll taxes over time.
But this structure has broken down due to a combination of demographic and policy changes, and Social Security now spends significantly more than it raises in revenue each year. The program’s trust fund system allows Social Security to temporarily run deficits commensurate with the savings generated by past surpluses. But in 2032, Social Security’s Old Age and Survivor Insurance (OASI) trust fund is projected to be depleted, and benefits will be automatically cut by 24% to match the program’s incoming revenues. Even if lawmakers were to combine the OASI fund with Social Security’s Disability Insurance fund, they would only delay insolvency by less than two years.
The prospect of such a steep and sudden benefit cut makes it difficult for current workers to plan for retirement and risks throwing vulnerable seniors into poverty. But simply continuing to fund scheduled benefits without any changes, whether by raising payroll taxes or by borrowing money to finance Social Security’s deficits, would impose an unfair burden on working Americans to solve a problem they did not create.
Unfortunately, today’s policymakers are not only failing to solve this problem — they are actively making it worse. Recent legislation has increased Social Security’s shortfall through unfunded benefit expansions and tax cuts, both moving up the date of insolvency and increasing the size of automatic cuts that will happen when that occurs. The most popular proposals in Congress for “addressing” Social Security’s insolvency rely on gimmicks that would strain the link between contributions and benefits while exposing the federal budget to massive fiscal risk.
If policymakers are unable or unwilling to make the current Social Security system sustainable in a way that’s consistent with its founding principles, then now is the time to reimagine it from the ground up. PPI believes that lawmakers should take this opportunity to reassess Social Security’s structure and build a new model that is fairer, more pro-work, and more sustainable for the future.
Through a groundbreaking new formula developed by PPI, we propose that Social Security award benefits based on the number of years someone worked, rather than their lifetime earnings. This innovative structure cements Social Security’s status as an “earned benefit” but is far more progressive and affordable than the current formula. A low-income worker and their higher-earning boss would get the same benefit if they put in the same amount of work, and anyone who works for at least 20 years would receive a benefit that keeps them out of poverty. Parents would also receive up to five years of credit for caregiving to reflect both their hard work and their contributions to future Social Security solvency.
Our comprehensive package of benefit reforms also makes a number of other changes to improve the fairness and sustainability of Social Security spending. We propose increasing Social Security’s retirement ages to keep pace with rising life expectancies, while preserving a special early retirement age for lower-earning workers, who have not experienced the same gains in longevity. We would change cost-of-living adjustments to more accurately reflect inflation but boost benefits for the oldest beneficiaries who are most at risk of outliving their savings. We would reform spousal and survivor benefits to better protect widow(er)s from falling into poverty. And we would make the recently passed “Social Security Fairness Act” live up to its name with fair treatment of people who work both in and out of the public sector.
Under PPI’s plan, beneficiaries in the top fifth of the lifetime earnings distribution would absorb cuts relative to the current formula that are, on average, comparable to the ones already slated to occur under current law. At the same time, the majority of beneficiaries would see no reduction in their monthly benefit, and many low-income or long-career workers would even receive greater benefits than they could receive under the current formula. Altogether, PPI’s proposed reforms would close half of the program’s shortfall over the next 30 years through benefit changes while reducing old-age poverty.
PPI would close the remainder of Social Security’s shortfall through new revenue. Under the current system, in which benefits are based on a worker’s contributions, the only structurally coherent way to raise revenue is by increasing the payroll tax. But the payroll tax is regressive and depresses the wages of working Americans. By transitioning to a system that awards benefits based on years of work rather than tax contributions, there is an opportunity to transition to a more progressive and economically efficient funding structure.
PPI’s framework proposes comprehensive changes to federal payroll and income taxes paired with broad-based consumption taxes that spread the cost of fixing the nation’s fiscal challenges fairly among all Americans. We would also reform the use of trust-fund accounting to prevent structural deficits from threatening to impose another big benefits cliff in the future.
Taken together, the proposals in this blueprint offer a robust framework for radically pragmatic Social Security reform that is both generationally and politically balanced. PPI realizes that any plan that reduces scheduled benefits or increases taxes on anyone but the ultra-rich will nevertheless be politically challenging to enact. The mathematical reality, however, is that any plan to rescue Social Security will require some combination of these difficult choices. And the longer policymakers wait to admit this, the more painful the solutions will become. Now is the time to address Social Security’s shortfall in a thoughtful way that is fair to working Americans and retirees alike, giving both groups retirement security they can depend on.
Read the full report.
Jacoby for Washington Monthly: Ukrainian Fighters Aren’t Expecting Much from the Trump-Putin Summit
The city of Sloviansk, prewar population just over 100,00, sits smack in the middle of the territory Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will discuss “swapping” when they meet on Friday in Alaska—the first U.S.-Russia summit since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Moscow and Kyiv have been fighting over Sloviansk more or less nonstop for more than 11 years, since Russian proxies first tried to take over the Donetsk province in 2014. With one exception—three months in spring 2014—the city has remained in Ukrainian hands.
Now, as world leaders talk over Ukrainians’ heads about giving up Sloviansk without another shot fired, I sat down with two soldiers who have been defending the city for over a year. Vlad Huma, 38, and Hlib Velitchenko, 32, say a swap of the kind Putin has proposed is unthinkable. But they know the conversation won’t end there, and they are girding for the worst.
Keep reading in Washington Monthly.
Moss for ProMarket: Weaponizing Antitrust and Regulation Will Hurt US Consumers
Making deals is a hallmark of the Trump administration. Take import tariffs, where much touted “dealmaking” translates to threats and coercion as the major tactic for igniting and fighting a trade war. The result has been market volatility and higher prices for consumer goods that will, in the end, hit working Americans in their paychecks and pocketbooks. This approach is spilling into antitrust and regulation, with interference by the Trump White House in government oversight of corporate consolidation. We see it in the granting of favors to companies that curry favor with the administration, the weaponization of enforcement and policy levers to punish corporations that are perceived enemies, and exercising political power simply for the sake of doing so.
Interference risks disruption to markets and competition. And the burden of these distortions will be borne by American consumers through higher prices and slower economic growth—raising their already high cost of living and embattled standard of living. Decisions on whether mergers or business practices violate federal antitrust law or regulatory statutes have—at all other times—been reserved for independent enforcers at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), sector regulators with competition mandates, and even the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
This is changing. Interference by the Trump White House in these important decisions is trending up. Usurpation of antitrust enforcement and regulatory decision-making deprives American consumers of the benefits of independent, expert government agency oversight. This risks compromising due process, the rule of law and, ultimately, the benefits of promoting competition and protecting consumer welfare. There are mounting examples of how antitrust and regulation are being weaponized by the Trump agencies.
Keep reading in ProMarket.
Manno for RealClearEducation: 20 Years After Hurricane Katrina: What New Orleans Teaches America About K-12 School Reform
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall and began its destructive path through the Gulf Coast. New Orleans bore the brunt of the devastation, not only in the loss of homes and lives, but also in the destruction of its public infrastructure, especially its schools. Over the next two decades, the governance of New Orleans’ K-12 public schools underwent a significant reinvention.
This effort produced one of the most innovative and ambitious approaches to K-12 school reform in modern American education: a system of public charter schools funded by taxpayers and independently operated as schools of choice. This reinvention of the New Orleans K-12 public school system sparked a nationwide conversation about public school governance, autonomy, school choice, and accountability.
Now, with twenty years of evidence and the return of schools to a locally elected board, the question is no longer whether New Orleans succeeded or failed. What will U.S. K-12 public education learn from this unparalleled innovation to improve the lives of New Orleans’ young people? While the New Orleans model was born of crisis, the lessons it offers extend well beyond The Big Easy.
Tulane University economist Douglas Harris and his colleagues have led the effort to understand these lessons. Harris is the founding director of the University’s Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, whose reports serve as the primary sources of information for the discussion that follows.
Read more in RealClearEducation.
Marshall for The Hill: In a Liberal Society, Equity is a False Idol
Over the last two decades, progressive activists have introduced lots of sententious words and euphemisms into the U.S. political lexicon.
Examples include microaggression, intersectionality, cisgender, BIPOC, Latinx, “the unhoused” (that is, the homeless), returning citizens (ex-convicts) and “pregnant persons” (formerly “women”).
For those not up to speed on the latest academic conceits and ideological fads, including non-college voters streaming out of the Democratic Party, progressives might as well be speaking Esperanto.
They have also infused old words with new meanings. Take “equity.” Specifically, it means ownership in a house or stocks. But in its new meaning, it is used more generally as a synonym for fairness.
Now, it has become a pillar of DEI — the hallowed trinity of diversity, equity and inclusion that defines today’s “social justice” ethos. In this context, “equity” conveys a demand for something stronger than mere equality.
Read more in The Hill.
Moss for Jacksonville Journal-Courier: Antitrust Immunity for the NCAA? That’s a Foul
If a billion-dollar organization breaks the law, should Congress reward it with immunity from the antitrust laws? The NCAA and some lawmakers seem to think so, and the recently introduced House bill — The Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act — does just this.
College sports are at a crossroads. Student-athletes have only recently gained the right to earn money from their name, image and likeness. Just as this progress gains steam, Congress may undermine it by granting the NCAA a sweeping exemption from antitrust law.
Buried in the legislation is a clause that would make “compliance” with it broadly immune from enforcement of federal antitrust law and any state law or rules that have the same effect, no matter how anti-competitive its rules may be.
Translation? The NCAA could collude to cap athlete earnings and enact other rules that work to suppress competition harmfully, and no one could stop them.